A Titanic Mistake
by Eduardo Ramos
Summary: Legends say that long ago, before the walls, there was a war waged between the North and the South. The names of the dead have been lost, the ashes of cities where life once thrived have been scattered, but a grim reminder of these people and their mistakes can still be found today. And one mistake stands apart from the rest.
1. Chapter 1

**January, Year 744**

General Kolbe glared down at the report on the city-state of Drastnost, which, according to the paper, was disappointingly strong. Well-armed and well positioned, it looked as though the station he was planning to attack next would not crack easily.

The door to his study creaked open, and the General's daughter, Ivonna, entered, bearing tea and cookies. The scent of the treats, now rare due to a low cut in sugar, wafted across the room and made the General smile.

"My, Ivo, those treats seem almost as sweet as you," said the General, smiling as the girl sat across from him and put the tray of delicacies on his desk.

"Oh, Daddy, wait until you _try_ one. Reise made them, and they're delectable. I can't believe we could afford the sugar to make them! It was so expensive today."

"Oh, but there's nothing better than what the General gets, love." General cracked one over his tea and dipped one of the halves into the beverage.

"Well, I hope you're doing your job to make up for it. What are you doing, anyway?" She stood and peered over the desk.

"This is an attack on Drastnost, the city you've been learning about in school."

"The one with all the rebels?"

"Yes. If we move our forces in here –" he drew a fine line across a map of the city-state, from the east "– we should be able to direct their cannon fire, which would allow us to lead several elite teams–" he drew several quick, short lines into the city "– into the city and burn their blasted wooden walls. We would then proceed North and cut off supply lines, letting King Aberforth do what he wants from there."

"I saw a picture of those walls, Daddy, they're very pretty. Do you have to burn them?"

"If I can, I'll save you a beam and bring it back," said the General, laughing at his daughter's sympathy to the enemy. There was no sympathy! What was she talking about? "It's been those Walls that have been the hardest thing to crack in this war. If it weren't for them, the North would have fallen long ago." He bit into the cookie, imagining it as the enemy's walls, and smiling.

"Daddy?"

"Hm?" said the General, cookie crumbs in the corner of his mouth.

"Why do people fight?"

"Well, it's because – um – sometimes people have thoughts or opinions that can't be resolved with – with quiet discussion."

"Like you and mom?"

The General pressed his lips together and glanced down at a photograph on his desk, one of the first taken in the South. In it stood the General, young with patriotism and hope for a victory in war, his uniform pressed neatly, all the buttons neatly aligned and shiny, his scarlet cape untorn and fresh. Next to him stood his stunning wife, Sara, her fine red hair braided beautifully across her head, her scarlet velvet dress smooth and formfitting. And in front of the couple was the beautiful Ivonna, her hair curled into ringlets and a smile on her face that dragged the viewer's attention to her immediately, just as it did in real life.

He looked up at his daughter, who had grown up to look exactly like her mother, from the slight wave in her hair to the shape of her face. She frowned and looked down. "Sorry," she said. "It's sensitive, I guess."

The General sighed. "Your mother was very…rambunctious. She didn't have the…patience…to wait for me to return from war. So she ran off with that young soldier."

"Have you heard from her since?"

"Sweetheart, I don't _want_ to hear from that cheating bitch ever again!" he said, tightening his grip on his cookie so it exploded into crumbs.

The pair looked at the General's hand.

"Sorry," said the General. "I hate to waste a good cookie."

Ivonna got up from her chair and sat down on her father's lap, snuggling up into his neck. "I'm tired," she said.

"Well, you've got a big day coming up, don't you?" said the General, scooping up his daughter and walking her out of his study. His military grade boots sank into the plush carpet, one of the only ones outside of the king's palace. "Private school and all that."

"Mmm," said Ivonna.

"I wish I had gone to a private school like you did," said the General, opening the door to his daughter's room, which was lit only by the moon. "Then I could have been safe during every attack."

"I don't like it. Everyone there is mean."

"Oh, do you really think that?" asked the General, smoothing down his daughter's hair.

"Yeah."

"I'm sure you'll make friends soon," he said, smoothing her daughter's hair down.

The pair gazed out the window, watching the distant flashes of orange light from cannon fire. Ivonna rubbed her eyes, then buried her face in her pillow.

"Just forget about them, sweetheart," said the General, stroking his daughter's hair. "Forget about the war, if only for a moment."

"I want them to stop. Forever."

"If there was a way to do it, I'd love to hear it."

"Maybe we could all be friends," said Ivonna, looking up at her father. "Maybe the North and the South could be friends and be one side! Then we wouldn't have cannon fire!"

The General laughed bitterly.

Ivonna yawned and rolled over, snuggling up next to a porcelain doll wearing a soft silk dress. "You'd like that, Mary, wouldn't you? Maybe there's a girl in the North, with a doll like you, we could be friends…"

"Humanity will never be on the same side," he whispered, so his daughter couldn't hear. "No matter how hard we try, there's no way."

"We're a species of fighters," he said, watching men blast cannons desperately, so separate from the intimate scene in Ivonna's bedroom.


	2. Chapter 2

**February, Year 744**

"General, please, control yourself!"

Lieutenant General Holzer tried to restrain her commanding officer, but General Kolbe wouldn't listen. He threw her arms off himself, sprinting over the singed rubble of the private school.

"Really!" said Holzer, throwing her hands up in the air. "Decency?!"

"His daughter went here, you know," said Lieutenant General Leizer, kneading his callused hands together. "I don't know why he's trying though. Everyone here is long dead."

"What happened?"

"North invaded while we were attacking Drastnost. Took the western side instead of the sea, burned everything here, then flushed out to the shanty town and boarded ships anchored in the bay. Great technique."

"They just burned the houses? That's it? Didn't the civilians fight back?"

"No, they attacked early. They barred the doors from the outside and set it ablaze while they were sleeping. Awful way to die, really."

"Poor girl. No one got out alive?"

"Nope. She was a real sweetheart, she was. She opened up a side in Kolbe I ain't seen before. He was…kind, almost."

Holzer snorted. "Kind. I'd like to see that."

"He was, especially around his wife. Sara. Then she ran off with that poor boy…"

"She must have been pretty desperate to run away from her rich life for a soldier like him."

"Yeah," said Leizer. "I think he found her."

"What? Really?"

Leizer pointed to a fair sized pile of rubble, smoking slightly. The General was bent over a small red-headed corpse, its skin burnt and blackened, her usually-white uniform now just a pile of ash.

"Ivonna," whispered the General, tears dripping down his face as he stroked his daughter's ruined face. "My angel, my happiness, gone…"

He thought back to that last happy night he had spent with her. What had she said? _"I wish we could all be friends."_

As much as he wanted to honor her last request, he couldn't force himself to. He couldn't imagine himself being friends, even comrades, with those blasted demons from the North. They had erased some of the most knowledgeable, the richest, the most caring of the South, those that, when employed on a diplomatic mission, could feasibly become friends with the North.

That wasn't an act of war.

That was an act of evil.

He placed his daughter down gently, brushing her brittle hair out of her ruined face. The General stood up, rubbing his face, not able to tear his es from his daughter. He couldn't imagine a punishment suitable for this. The idea of doing the exact same thing – burning innocents in the North – was horrifically painful now.

"General!"

The General looked up at Holzer, who was standing over a pile of corpses. Leizer stood by, watching the woman warily. "We're burning the bodies! Bring her over here!"

"What?!" shouted the General, running forward. "No! No, you can't!"

Holzer picked her way down the pile, stopping in front of it, crossing her arms. "Why not?"

"It's –" the General dived around her, dragging a well-maintained corpse of a young boy out of the pile to the General's dismay "– you can't, it's – it's inhuman–"

"General, I hate to object, but if you continue to act like this, I'll be forced to remove you from the warzone!"

"But you _can't_! These are children, and their parents – don't you think their parents would care if they found out their children were burned?!"

"General, _you've_ authorized the burning of corpses! Hundreds of times, if not thousands! What makes a difference to you, exactly?! Their age?! Their social status?!"

"It's just – just – these children – they deserve more respect than – that –"

"I don't _care_ what you think they deserve! Back at the Northern Border, _you_ authorized the burning of people who were some of my closest friends! Good lord, _you_ left behind the injured just so you could return to your plush home faster! You've never cared about _anything_ before, but now that it was yours, all of a sudden you become this caring, respectful person that wants everyone to have _peace_ and _honor_ and - no!"

The General stared at Holzer, dumbfounded. "Don't you," she whispered, her lower lip quivering in a rare display of emotion.

"W – Well, no more. I'm following majority, here. If you wanted the bodies burned before, then – then –" She ripped a match out of her pocket, whipped it down her thigh, and threw it into her fire, setting the dry corpses ablaze. "Then I'm doing it now. No different."

The General felt a fury building in him that he'd never felt before, a sheer blind rage aimed directly at Lieutenant General Holzer. _She's right, but – no, how _dare_ she say that_!

Just as he was about to throw himself at the Lieutenant General, Leizer wrapped himself around the General, pulling him back.

"No!" screamed the General. "It's wrong, she can't do that!"

"General, please, the public. Please be calm in front of them, I'll explain everything in my bunk."

The General struggled in silence against Leizer's arms, but the latter managed to drag him back to a secluded area of the rubble. Leizer threw the General away from him.

"Listen to me," he said, talking quickly. "You and I know it's a law that if multiple Lieutenant Generals believe that a General is incapable of making orders, then said Lieutenant Generals have the right to issue orders in the General's place. Holzer _will_ exercise that law if you continue acting this way – Dear God, _I_ will exercise that law based on your actions today. This isn't for my good. This is for yours. Now please, _please_ calm down."

"She had no right to do that," murmured the general, shaking. "She had no right to burn those bodies."

"Yes she did," said Leizer. "She's right, you know that. She was just blunt about it."

The General felt his face contort, a tear dripping down reluctantly.

"Emotion is frowned upon here, General, but I think you know that."

The General sighed and buried his face in his hands. "Leizer – w-what do I do…do now?"

"Carry on as planned."

"I can't do that," said the General. Half of what he had planned revolved around this town, revolved around the people that had once lived here.

"But you have to. You have to let go."

"I – I'll work on it," said the General, looking up at his Lieutenant Commander, the one he had pushed through training. Since he had risen to his current position, the General's favored advisor looked as if he had gained fifty years – perhaps it was the fact that his entire village had been obliterated by the North. "And – Leizer?"

"Sir?"

"Thank you. For –"

"It's my duty to serve the General, you know that. I'll tell my men to make sure Ivonna gets a more dignified funeral."

"Thanks."

The Lieutenant General saluted him and smiled, then turned on his heel and marched back towards the fire, where the curvy form of Holzer prowled around its edge.

The General watched him to make sure he didn't turn back, then reached into his pocket and removed a hand-drawn picture of a red-headed stick figure and a taller gray-haired one. A small heart was drawn in the corner, with the scribbled words, "Please come home."

"Ivonna, I'm not going to let you go," said the General. "I swear I'll get those Northern bastards back if it's the last thing I do."


End file.
